The Thing

Dir: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.

2011

***

I don’t like remakes, I don’t like re-boots and I generally despise the idea behind prequels. They almost never work. I certainly don’t like the idea of making a remake/re-boot/prequel of a classic film. Producers Marc Abraham and Eric Newman already committed the cardinal sin by remaking Dawn of the Dead, even if it did turn out to be a guilty pleasure. However, I think the idea behind 2011’s The Thing is actually rather clever and holds it’s own as a concept. The two producers searched through the Universal Studios library to find new properties to work on. Upon finding John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing, the two convinced Universal to create a prequel instead of a remake, as they felt that remaking Carpenter's film would be like "painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa". Nicely put, and I know producers have to prove themselves while also making money with limited funds, but the idea of looking over old films to remake leaves me cold. These guys leave me less cold however. Eric Newman explained; "I'd be the first to say no one should ever try to do Jaws again and I certainly wouldn't want to see anyone remake The Exorcist - we really felt the same way about The Thing. It's a great film. But once we realized there was a new story to tell, with the same characters and the same world, but from a very different point of view, we took it as a challenge. It's the story about the guys who are just ghosts in Carpenter's movie – they're already dead. But having Universal give us a chance to tell their story was irresistible.” For once, I totally agreed. Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr. became involved in the project when his first planned feature film – Army of the Dead - was cancelled. He was hired to directed the sequel to the Dawn of the Dead remake - a zombie film that would take place in Las Vegas - that was written and would be produced by Zack Snyder, who directed the Dawn of the Dead remake. It was cancelled just three weeks before production. Needing to start all over again, he asked his agent to see if there was a Thing-like project in development, since Alien and The Thing are his favorite films. As a fan of Carpenter's film, he was interested in the project because, being European himself, he had always wondered what happened at the Norwegian camp. In March 2009, Ronald D. Moore described his script as a "companion piece" to Carpenter's film and "not a remake”. “We're telling the story of the Norwegian camp that found the Thing before the Kurt Russell group did". Eric Heisserer was later hired to do a complete rewrite of Moore's script. Heisserer explained that in writing the script, it was necessary for him to research all the information that was revealed about the Norwegian camp from the first film, down to the smallest details, so that it could be incorporated into the prequel in order to create a consistent backstory. The decision was made to name the film the same title as the first film, because the producers felt adding a "colon title" such as Exorcist II: The Heretic had felt less reverential. Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr. explained that he created the film not to simply be a horror film, but to also focus largely on the human drama with the interaction between characters, as the first film had. The director felt that horror films worked better when time was spent to explore the characters' emotional journeys, allowing the audience to care about them. The story was a lot more like The Thing From Another World and the novel Who Goes There? on which it was adapted from with the characters being educated scientists as opposed to "blue collar" workers as seen in Carpenter’s version. I think there were too many American’s in it personally and I would have liked to have seen it filmed entirely in Norwegian but I liked Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s ‘Ellen Ripley’ take on the lead role and the all important feelings of paranoia and distrust were in place much like the 1982 film. The writers wisely ignored the story behind the popular 2002 The Thing video game, even though Carpenter has confirmed it is canon and the official sequel to his 1982 film. Overall the story is the same, just a little different in places. An alien spacecraft is discovered beneath the Antarctic ice by a team from a Norwegian research base. Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is recruited by Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) and his assistant Adam Finch (Eric Christian Olsen) to investigate. They travel to the Norwegian base, Thule Station, in a helicopter piloted by Sam Carter (Joel Edgerton) and Derek Jameson (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). After viewing the spacecraft, Kate, Sander, and Adam are told the group also discovered an alien body from the crash, buried in the ice nearby. The body is brought to the base in a block of ice. That evening, while the team celebrates, Derek sees the alien burst from the ice and escape the building. The team searches for the creature. Olav and Henrik find it, and Henrik is killed. The rest of the group set fire to the creature, killing it. An autopsy reveals that its cells were imitating Henrik's own. Derek, Carter, Griggs and a sick Olav take the helicopter to seek help. Kate discovers dental fillings near a blood-soaked shower. She runs outside to flag down the helicopter. When it attempts to land, Griggs transforms and attacks Olav. The helicopter spins out of control and crashes in the mountains. Kate finds the shower has been cleaned up and tells the team that the alien survived, and replicates itself by imitating its victims. The team decides to send a party to the closest base over Kate's objections. When she and Juliette look for the vehicles' keys to prevent anyone from leaving, Juliette transforms and tries to attack Kate, but she flees past Karl, who is killed by the creature. Lars arrives with a flamethrower and burns the creature just as it begins to absorb Karl. That night Carter and Derek stumble back to the base. Not certain humans could have survived the crash, Kate has them isolated until a test can be prepared. Adam and Sander start work on a test, but the lab is burned when left briefly unattended. Kate thinks of another test based on the absence of dental fillings, isolating those without them: Sander, Edvard, Adam, and Colin. Lars and Jonas go to retrieve Carter and Derek for testing, and discover they have escaped. As Lars searches a building, he is suddenly pulled inside. The group hears Carter and Derek breaking into their own building and rushes to intercept them. In the middle of a standoff, Edvard orders Peder to burn them. Before he can, Derek shoots Peder dead in self-defense, but also punctures the flamethrower's fuel tank, setting off an explosion that knocks Edvard unconscious. When brought to the rec room, Edvard transforms and infects Jonas and kills Derek before assimilating Adam. Kate torches the infected Jonas and Derek's body before she and Carter pursue the creature. Sander is ambushed. Colin hides in the radio room. Carter is cornered in the kitchen, but Kate burns the creature. A replaced Sander drives off into the night, pursued by Kate and Carter in the remaining snowcat. They arrive at the spacecraft, which suddenly activates and its engines begin to crack the ice covering it. Kate falls into the ship and explores it, finally confronted by the Sander-creature. Kate kills it with a grenade and the explosion shuts down the ship's engines. Kate and Carter escape and Carter suggests driving to a Soviet base about fifty miles away. Kate notices that Carter is missing an earring he wore and becomes suspicious: she knew he was human earlier because he was still wearing it. Carter points the wrong ear when she confronts him. Kate burns him, and his scream is alien. She retreats to Sander's snowcat. In a scene that runs alternating with the credits, a helicopter pilot, Matias, arrives by morning at the now destroyed Norwegian outpost. He shouts, looking for any survivors. Colin is shown to have committed suicide in the radio room using a straight razor to slash both his arms and throat to ensure the Thing could never get to him. Matias sees the charred remains of the Adam/Edvard-Thing in the snow. Lars, still alive and uninfected, orders Matias at gunpoint to show his dental fillings to prove that he is human. The Thing, having taken the form of Lars' dog, runs out of the camp. Lars realizes it's the Thing and orders Matias to start the helicopter. As the dog flees, they give chase in the helicopter, Lars leaning out and shooting at it with a scoped rifle. This last scene is the first scene of the 1982 version. It’s very well written and gives us fans of the original another chance to see the film again without it being a total rip-off, even though that is kind of what it is. I liked it a lot, of course it is no way near as cool as the 1982 version but I still enjoyed it. The set pieces fit well in comparison to the original and the music wasn’t too bad either given the greatness of Carpenter’s now iconic soundtrack. The special effects of the first film are hard to beat and the new effects were a little too CGI for my liking but they had some neat ideas about them. It is a tidy film that knows the importance of continuity. It was unnecessary but certainly not sacrilege.